Layout in Pages vs MS Word '11 for Mac

Thanks for the effort. This response would make more sense if we weren't talking about a different kind of software. These programs, Word and Pages, both lay down text on a (potentially) physical paper. The formatting standards are exceptionally regularized: 12-point font, Times New Roman, double-spaced lines, 1" margins, etc. So if I print physical copies of the same document with the same formatting in Pages and Word, what would account for the discrepancy? Their difference suggests that either Pages or Word is not, in fact, actually printing with 1" margins, for example, or that one program is not kerning the font in the industry standard way. Perhaps the font that Pages calls 12-point Times New Roman is not really the standard for that font. In any case, all of these formatting parameters are concrete and well-established standards, not arbitrary software conventions as you imply. I have a bit of experience with OpenOffice, and their word-processing documents do a much better job of cloning Word's documents...though again, I want to use Pages for the versioning and backup that Lion and iCloud offer when you use Pages but not (yet) OpenOffice or Word. Any other ideas?

Update: I think I've figured out one or two salient differences. I did so by exporting Pages documents as Word documents, examining them in Word, and then examining them in Pages. When Pages exports a document as a Word file and that file is opened in Word, the layout and line breaks and page breaks appear just as if the same document were originally created in Word. Good stuff. I did, however, notice that an empty footer in said document contained a non-printing hard return. I suspect this is an artifact of difference #1: I believe Pages does not hide empty header and footer space, whereas Word does. That's just a guess, and no tech support person has been able to articulate this difference to me. Second, and even more interestingly, when I use Pages to open the Word file I originally exported from Pages, the document reverts to the layout seen in the original, Pages-native version--even though the very exported Word document I'm using Pages to open was, when opened with Word, laid out as Word would do it. When opening this Word document, pages provides this error message: "Character borders are not supported and were removed." I know nothing about character borders, but that seems like a good candidate for difference #2. The fellow answering this question seems to know what he's talking about in re: character borders. If anyone has further insight on which of these differences, or both, is causing the discrepancy, or about how one might correct for them--say, by changing type sets?--then I'd be quite glad to hear your thoughts.